Falling Immortality by Robert Downs & Giveaway (INT)

Synopsis:

Debut, hard-boiled mystery fiction for men. Stephen King’s son describes a fitting genre as MANfiction (the opposite of Chick lit).

Casey Holden, former cop, current PI in Virginia Beach, VA, screens his clients the way he screens his women, based on whichever drop-dead gorgeous woman happens to waltz through his door first and manages to hold his attention. So when Felicity Farren, widow-at-large, struts into his office asking him to solve the two-year-old murder of her husband Artis, she intrigues him. When Casey starts digging, he learns the murder isn’t what it seems to be and he doesn’t have a big enough shovel to unearth the truth. And to top it all off, his former rival at the police department, Greg Gilman, is determined to disrupt his investigation. Casey’s challenge is to learn what really happened to Artis, and why Gilman can’t seem to remove his head from his butt. And he’ll need all of his wits to complete the task.

My View: This book got me interested from the word ‘go’. It started off with getting us to know the character of Casey Holden and my, my, what a character. You’ll either love him or hate him. I did the former fortunately. However, if you want your detective to behave like one – be a man of few words, insightful and mature, you probably won’t like Holden.

I adored him though, his light humor had me laughing throughout and don’t you dare take him for stupid or a gone case, because he’s not. He’s just got a few screws loose, that’s it. But he knows his job and does it damn well.

Coming over to the mystery/ thriller part, I had to jog my mind a lot of times thinking has this character already been introduced and later coming to know that he hasn’t, it’s his introduction that’s going on. But otherwise, the mystery part was done really well though I couldn’t get complete closure and the ‘out in the open’ thing could have used some more practicality.

Another thing I had major issues with were all the brainless, sex-fed woman in this book. Not a single strong, brainy one. *sigh* But well, you can’t get everything, can you? And the women that he met were also decided by who Casey Holden is, so well.

All in all, I really liked the character of Casey Holden and how he solves his cases. So I’m going to look out for the next Casey Holden book.

Robert aspired to be a writer before he realized how difficult the writing process was. Fortunately, he’d already fallen in love with the craft, otherwise Casey might never have seen print. Originally from West Virginia, Robert has lived in Virginia, Massachusetts, and now resides in New Mexico.

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Who am I?

Often seen with a nose buried in a book, you might spy me at a library while 300+ unread books adorn my shelf. At other times, I'm busy playing psychologist, travelling solo, eating out or looking for my new escapades. You will always find me doing too much all at once.